Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks about the influence of money in politics and directly blasts former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for spending $200 million on the presidential campaign so far. From Jan. 19, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.
Video Transcript
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: And understand this, it’s going on right now, in the primaries. We’ve got billionaires who think they can just buy an election. Case and point, Michael Bloomberg has already dropped $200 million to make his voice heard, and drown out every other voice in this Democratic primary.
Think about what that means, and he plans to skip the democracy part of the election, that is, coming to places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, and meeting people.
Instead, it’s all going to be set up for TV, running his TV ads to make it work. And, here comes the latest parts. It just comes out that he has applied to the Federal Election Commission to delay making his federally required financial disclosures.
When does he want to delay it to? Until after Super Tuesday, and we have picked, very possibly, have picked our candidate by then. So think about that. If he has entanglements with China, serious conflicts of interest, business interests in other parts of the world, or corporations.
When are we going to know about this? Not until after Super Tuesday. That is not how democracy is supposed to work and we need to shut that down.
I’m so glad to be here with all of you because today, this is our big chance in 2020. To build a grassroots movement, to make our voices heard across this nation, to say we don’t want a government that just works for billionaires. We don’t want a government that just works for giant corporations. We don’t want a government that just works for corporate executives. We want a government that works for the people. That’s what democracy is about and that’s what we can do in 2020. Thank you all! Thank you!
